1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus used to prevent individuals who are reflex-impaired, due either to a lack of emotional capacity or due to intoxicating blood alcohol or drug levels, from operating a motor vehicle, and more particularly, to such an apparatus which circumvents the actual ability of a reflex-impaired driver to start the engine of his or her vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art devices designed to prevent a person of diminished capacity from operating a motor vehicle are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,755,776, issued to Kotras; 3,886,540, issued to Sussman et al.; and 3,913,086, issued to Adler et al.
People drink alcoholic beverages, occasionally, to excess, and still attempt to drive their automobiles afterwards. Whether they simply do not recognize their impaired reflex abilities to do so safely or whether they feel the need to "get home" at all costs; the disastrous results are the same. It would be unlikely for inebriated individuals to acknowledge the risks that they are taking by attempting to drive while under the influence to not only themselves, but to those innocent individuals they are likely to meet, by sheer coincidence while on their way to their destination, in the course of their reflex-impaired operation of the vehicle.
Intoxicated drivers are only a partial cross-section of people who should not be operating a motor vehicle at any given time.
Included in this dangerous group are those individuals who are temporarily emotionally impaired since they are equally dangerous to the safety of the overall population. Some pertinent examples of emotionally impaired persons might be but are not limited to people in a high state of anger, whether they have just had a fight with a spouse or friend, young adults upset at their family and or world, individuals who are late to get somewhere and are overly anxious about it, individuals who might deem their necessity to be somewhere "now" as emergencies, and certainly not last or least, those who are experiencing real or imagined "medical emergencies".
Emotionally-impaired people, when tested, show a direct, predictable correlation between their reflex-impairment (their reflexes slow down and become erratic) and their emotional state at the time of testing. Reflex-impaired drivers include:
1-Those having drugs in their systems (whether prescribed by a doctor or simply "street drugs").
2-Those who have been prescribed medication by a doctor in order to bring their otherwise inadequate reflex systems up to a reasonable level of proficiency and have neglected or forgotten to take these medications;
3-Those individuals taking medically prescribed drugs which have been shown to cause a slowing down of the nervous systems ability to respond to outside stimuli either as a required result or as a side effect. An intoxicated, emotionally or otherwise "reflex-impaired" driver can with the use of the present invention, be identified and circumvented from operating his or her vehicle. It is also a concern to public safety that experienced drinkers, depending on the level of intoxication or impairment might be able to fake their condition long and well enough to get by the otherwise well meaning eyes of friends, bartenders and even policeman if the performance is acted out well enough. A serious social drinker, an alcoholic, a perpetual drug user or drug addict will surely have learned to act his way out to his car, past all the well meaning friends. The frightening end result to this scenario is the all to well recognized "fatality statistic".